Fools and knaves: Obama edition

President Obama put on a good show on the subject of Benghazi in his joint press conference with David Cameron yesterday. He expressed something like righteous indignation regarding coverage of the story and his alleged his lack of candor regarding the attack. Employing the famous Gertrude Stein quotation, he alleged that there is no there there.

Maybe. As Bill Clinton might explain, it depends on the meaning of “there.”

It is probably not too much to dismiss Obama’s comments yesterday as a pack of lies, though it would be nice to see the CIA’s presidential daily briefings to which Obama made reference. Did they depart from the original version of the “talking points” drafted by the CIA? If so, I should think Obama would be looking into it, but of course he isn’t.

I think it’s fair to conclude that the CIA should not be faulted for Obama’s continued yammering about the “crude and disgusting” Muhammad video two weeks after the massacre of our men in Benghazi. Obama declared at the UN that “there are no words that excuse the killing of innocents” and that there is “no video that justifies an attack on an embassy.”

Why was Obama talking about the Muhammad video two weeks after the attack in the context of the Benghazi massacre? He obviously wanted the world to think it went to the heart of the events in Benghazi, but at least in that respect there was no there there.